Monumental landscapes of the Holocene humid period in Northern Arabia: The mustatil phenomenon

Abstract

Between 10 and six thousand years ago the Arabian Peninsula saw the most recent of the ‘Green Arabia’ periods, when increased rainfall transformed this generally arid region. The transition to the Neolithic in Arabia occurred during this period of climatic amelioration. Various forms of stone structures are abundant in northern Arabia, and it has been speculated that some of these dated to the Neolithic, but there has been little research on their character and chronology. Here we report a study of 104 ‘mustatil’ stone structures from the southern margins of the Nefud Desert in northern Arabia. We provide the first chronometric age estimate for this type of structure – a radiocarbon date of ca. 5000 BC – and describe their landscape positions, architecture and associated material culture and faunal remains. The structure we have dated is the oldest large-scale stone structure known from the Arabian Peninsula. The mustatil phenomenon represents a remarkable development of monumental architecture, as hundreds of these structures were built in northwest Arabia. This ‘monumental landscape’ represents one of the earliest large-scale forms of monumental stone structure construction anywhere in the world. Further research is needed to understand the function of these structures, but we hypothesise that they were related to rituals in the context of the adoption of pastoralism and resulting territoriality in the challenging environments of northern Arabia.

Taphonomy of an excavated striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) den in Arabia: implications for paleoecology and prehistory

“…In fact, very little is known about the Holocene paleoecology of northern Arabia (Petraglia et al 2020) and this is, in no small part, due to the extremely scant fossil record of the region. For example, in the Nefud Desert-an important region for understanding the Neolithization of northern Arabia-only four early-to mid-Holocene sites have yielded faunal remains (Guagnin et al 2017(Guagnin et al 2021Scerri et al 2018;Groucutt et al 2020). Moreover, the faunal material from these sites is extremely fragmentary, providing very little taxonomic insight.…”

The mustatils: cult and monumentality in Neolithic north-western Arabia

“…comm .). Similarly, charcoal recovered from a looted mustatil, located south of the Nefud Desert, has also produced a late sixth- to early fifth-millennium BC date, along with similar faunal remains (Groucutt et al 2020). A ritual function for these structures is also suggested by their size and prominence in the landscape, as well as the low height of the long walls (0.3–0.5m) and narrow entranceways, which suggest that mustatils could not have functioned as animal pens.…”

“…These features have recently been renamed by the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) as mustatils , due to their general shape— mustatil (مستطيل ) being the Arabic for ‘rectangle’—and to avoid nomenclatorial confusion (cf. Guagnin 2020: 111; Groucutt et al 2020). The large size of many of these structures, combined with their frequency, suggests that they were an important component of the ancient Arabian cultural landscape.…”

“…) being the Arabic for 'rectangle'-and to avoid nomenclatorial confusion (cf. Guagnin 2020: 111; Groucutt et al 2020). The large size of many of these structures, combined with their frequency, suggests that they were an important component of the ancient Arabian cultural landscape.…”

Creating the funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan

“…Desert are recurrently addressed as empty spaces, but therein archaeological stone monuments represent a major constituent of the cultural landscapes and a glaring mark of the Anthropocene. Such complex archaeological landscapes also represent proxy data for past different environmental settings [28][29][30][31][32]. In this regard, the objective of our study is the comprehensive interpretation of the environmental and cultural factors underlying the genesis and evolution of the funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan.…”